From Brazil:

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Surreal, Delightful Political Satire With Soccer, Gender-Bending and Giant Puppies—‘Diamantino’, dir. Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt, 2018

The end of a soccer legend’s career makes him an easy target for Portuguese nationalists, opportunism, and greed—but will his kind heart show him the way to love and truth?

November 29th, 2020|Country: Brazil, France, Portugal, USA|

The Exhausting Reality of Being on the Vanguard in the Fight for Trans and Sex Worker Rights in Brazil—‘Indianara’, dir. Marcelo Barbosa & Aude Chevalier-Beaumel, 2019

A consummate portrait of Brazilian organizer Indianara follows her through joy and pain, rites of passages, and a tense fight for the respect, inclusion, and protection of which her community is constantly robbed

October 1st, 2020|Country: Brazil|

The Songs and Sorrows of São Paulo’s ‘Crack Land’—‘Let It Burn’, dir. Maíra Bühler, 2019

Tender documentary set in a recovery project for homeless crack users shows that longing, loneliness and lack of perspectives are just as hard to overcome as substance dependence

July 30th, 2020|Country: Brazil|

Disaffected Youth, Colonization and the Spirit-Ridden Forrests of the Amazon—‘The Dead and the Others’, dir. João Salaviza & Renée Nader Messora, 2018

A coming-of-age story set in a Krahô people reservation shows the double bind of alienation that an indigenous young man has to grapple with as he becomes the man of the house

July 26th, 2020|Country: Brazil, Ge people, Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, Kraho people, Portugal|

Trans Body as a Weapon: The Personal and the Political In Gender Insurgency—‘Bixa Travesty/Tranny Fag’, dir. Claudia Priscilla & Kiko Goifman, 2018

A riveting showcase of Linn da Quebrada, an Afro-Brazilian trans rap star from the favela, who dismantles racism, the binary and the patriarchy with her militant music, performances, and life

July 2nd, 2020|Country: Brazil|

Brilliance, Blackness, and Brutality of Brazilian Revolutionary Hero—The ‘Marighella,’ dir. Wagner Moura, 2019

A powerful portrait of a man who tried to take down the Brazilian Military Dictatorship is necessary viewing on the question of violent resistance

June 5th, 2020|Country: Brazil|

Progress Flailing Under the Stronghold of Capital—’The Edge of Democracy,’ dir. Petra Costa, 2019

An intimate yet sprawling account of Brazil's journey from Lula to Dilma to Bolsonaro that dissects the tumor of "Operation Car Wash" and studies its underlying causes

April 21st, 2020|Country: Brazil|

Penciled In for Greatness: The World’s Foremost Micro Sculptors and Their Extreme Graphite Skills, Part 1

The art of carving pencil tips produces tiny works with a myriad of complexities, from potent minimalism to the lush wilderness, from pop-culture references to Dali and Banksy

March 17th, 2020|Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, United Kingdom, USA|

Brazilian Students Narrate Their Struggle Against Austerity and Neoconservatism—‘Your Turn’, dir. Eliza Capai, 2019

Three Brazilian student activists present a multidimensional, inclusive account of their fight for the right to education over the past decade in an electrifying, award-winning documentary

January 15th, 2020|Country: Brazil|

Film: Before It’s Too Late, dir. Leandro Goddinho, 2019

Staying tender while standing ground: teenage pop idols are drawn to each other at the advent of Bolsonaro's regime and decide to reinvent themselves against his homophobic agenda

November 21st, 2019|Country: Brazil|

Film: The Orphan, dir. Carolina Markowicz, 2018

A sparkly Brazilian child finds he’s better off at an orphanage than with small-minded families in a searing, necessary study of the trauma that adoption can wreak on queer kids

November 20th, 2019|Country: Brazil|

Film: Marielle’s Legacy Will Not Die, dir. Leonard Cortana, 2019

An incendiary documentary about the events on the anniversary of Marielle Franco's death—a black queer feminist activist from a favela, she was murdered by ex-policemen with ties to Jair Bolsonaro

November 4th, 2019|Country: Brazil, USA|

Film: Queen of Lapa, dir. Theodore Collatos and Carolina Monnerat, 2019

Veteran transgender sex-worker Luana Muniz helps younger women like her find self-determination: a brilliant portrait of a community matriarch and Rio's vibrant neighborhood of Lapa

October 22nd, 2019|Country: Brazil|

Brazilian Modern, The Living Art of Roberto Burle Marx at New York Botanical Garden, 2019

The work of a visionary modernist landscape designer and pioneer of rainforest preservation recreated in New York City by his student: plantlife that's as politically relevant as it is beautiful

September 11th, 2019|Country: Brazil|

Book: Gaston Dorren, Babel, 2018

A book of wildly entertaining and illuminating essays on the world’s top 20 languages that celebrates the planet’s differences and similarities in a new way and makes you want to learn a new language

July 11th, 2019|Country: Brazil, Cameroon, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Suriname, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tamil Eelam, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda, United Kingdom, USA, Vietnam|